CHLOE 

The back garden looked exactly the same. My fairy path was still there, grass creeping over the edges of the flagstones and growing between the cracks. The crabapple tree stood still, frozen in time, although somehow smaller than I remember. Isn't that always the way when you see something from your past years later? It always seems smaller now than it did at the time. Is it because you have grown up, so your sense of proportion is different, perhaps? Or is it because everything from your childhood is magnified, because you live life in the moment, so therefore every experience seems larger than life and bigger than it really is? 

The wall between us and next door can't be much higher than my waist now, and I had forgotten there was also a plastic mesh fence attached to the lower brickwork, where I used to peer through and laugh with my friend Hayley. How much life has changed since those days. How much did I used to take my life for granted, with all my childish innocence, never dreaming there would be a day in the not too distant future where I would be all alone in this house, this garden, for the very last time, accompanied by my social worker, packing my clothes into a suitcase to be taken to a childrens home in South London.

"Just a temporary measure," the woman at social services had assured me, "until we find you a foster home back in Broadstairs. There is nothing at the moment but you'd be surprised how quickly something turns up when people hear about your circumstances."

I'd believed her, of course. I'd been convinced I would have a new home by the end of the week. But the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into years. I slipped further down the list because I wasn't causing any trouble at the children's home, and although my grades slipped drastically from what they had been I wasn't classed as an urgent case - there were simply far more children with a greater need for a stable home than me. 

Harry's footsteps shuffle on the pavement behind me as I lead him silently back along the road we have just come, over the little roundabout and along the main street of the village of St Peters, Broadstairs. There are so many things flashing through my mind as I walk along:

The chippy where once or twice a month I would come with my dad on a Friday night after he got home from work, and we would buy three battered haddocks and a large portion of chips, drenched in salt and vinegar, and take them home to my mum who would have the plates warming in the oven. We wouldn't bother to put the food directly on the plates though, we would just open up the paper and put the plates underneath so the grease wouldn't soak through, and eat it with a little wooden chip fork.

The hairdresser where I convinced my mum to take me, aged about nine, and have all my hair chopped off into a bob. I hated it immediately of course, and cried all the way home. I prayed that night it would grow just long enough for me to tie it back into a ponytail, but of course it didn't and for the next year or so I grew it out until it had returned to its previous length.

The little supermarket where my mum would sometimes do the weekly shop when she couldn't be bothered to travel across town to the larger one on the retail park. She moaned every time, about the prices of the groceries at the little one, but a few weeks later she would be back there again in a hurry after work, and moan about it again all evening.

The recreation ground, where I used to come some afternoons after school when I was little with my mum. The play area had changed drastically - I barely recognise the place, with its soft rubber safety mats, its woodbark footing beneath a single rubber tyre swing, and its new sensory area that used to be the monkey bars in my day.

The road beyond the rec, leading in the direction of the beach, where I know that through the trees old caves are visible, closed off now to the public and housed on private property, and known for being used by smugglers hundreds of years ago to bring contraband ashore. 

The tiny little convenience store, that eventually became the only place that sold Bing, a strange fruity, fizzy drink that was pinky red in colour, manufactured only in Broadstairs, and somewhat of a local delicacy. I have never seen it anywhere else, and as far as I know it is no longer made.

And finally, as the street narrows, the church comes into view. Built some time in the eleventh century, it is made of crumbly-looking grey stone with high pointed-arched windows and a clock tower rising behind with battlements decorating the top. A memorial stands proudly in the entrance to the church yard, adorned with summer flowers and topped with a stone cross. I can feel my legs wobbling as I approach the opening, but take a deep breath and steel myself to turn inside. I pause, standing in front of the memorial for a minute, working up the courage to continue. I can feel Harry behind me and even though he is not saying anything, somehow his presence is comforting and makes me feel safe. He is like a shield covering my back, protecting me from the rest of the world, encouraging me forward even though he has no idea.

I dig my fingernails into my palms, gather up every ounce of courage I have left in me, and force myself to put one foot deliberately in front of the other up the concrete path that leads between the gravestones. The tombs either side of me are hundreds of years old, and now so weathered they are mostly unreadable; countless names erased and forgotten over time, their descendants probably unaware of their great-great-great-great grandparents lying six feet below me now, likely nothing more than a pile of dust. The grounds are a little overgrown, now only maintained by church volunteers who are no doubt struggling in the unceasing heat of this summer to cut back the bushes, grasses and brambles that are inching their way between the tombstones like silent intruders. Once past the back of the church I continue in a straight line, barely looking at the memorials whizzing by in my haste. I don't look behind me to see if Harry is still following me, because I know he is. I know that he knows where I am going, and I also know he wouldn't desert me now, not when I need him the most, not when I have opened up to him and brought him into this part of my life, not when I have spent the last few weeks protecting him and covering his back. He is with me now, and he isn't going anywhere.

I come to a crossroads in the path and take the left turn, heading towards the boundary wall of the churchyard. It is not a wide, open, clinical space, but sheltered and private, the paths punctuated by trees and shrubs and tall monoliths. Weathered statues of angels are dotted here and there marking the more fancy and well looked after graves, and I pass the occasional huge stone box tomb, and an entrance to an underground mausoleum, housing several generations of local families.

I reach the perimeter wall of the cemetery and turn right again, heading further towards the back of the lawn. About twenty metres before the back wall I come to a stop, glancing at the names on the ends of the rows. I don't know the exact location of their final resting place - I haven't been back here since the funeral. I remember it was over this side, and fairly near the back, but years of keeping these memories buried has taken its toll. I walk slowly along one row, my eyes skimming the names in front of me, searching for the headstone I can see so clearly in my mind: a dark grey, marble open book, facing skywards. My mum's name on the left, my dad's on the right, the letters engraved in a soft champagne gold. Harry follows right behind me, this time not keeping his usual distance. I can hear his breathing and the crunching of his footsteps in the undergrowth, but still I don't look at him. I can look at nothing else but these names, thousands of names of people who have died; mothers, fathers, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, sons and daughters. All loved, all missed, all gone from this earth never to return, leaving grieving families behind. This is the place to come, if ever one needed to gain some perspective in life. Whatever troubles we may think we have, they are nothing compared to suffering the loss of a loved one.

The death of my parents hit me hard. I went overnight from being the centre of two people's world to an irrelevant speck of dust in an infinite universe. I gave up believing in the power of positivity. I gave up believing in happy endings. I gave up believing I mattered, and that I can achieve anything I put my mind to, because when you are left in an orphanage with no family, no friends and no home, and the world moves on without you, you realise that you are completely insignificant to everyone and everything around you. What was the point in working hard at school, when there was no one to celebrate my success? No warm hug from my mum for acing a test, no tickle-hug from my dad when I got an A for a piece of work. No one to be proud of me for simply learning to exist by myself after my home was ripped out from under me. I may sound self-pitying, and I worked hard not to use my tragic story as an excuse or a bargaining tool to get special treatment. But all I desperately wanted was for everything to go back to how it was before. All I wanted was to blend into the background, unseen by the bullies who laughed at me for having no parents and no friends; forgotten by the classmates who sniggered behind my back every Mother's Day, Father's Day, school concert and parent's evening. I put all my time and energy into fading into the background and keeping out of everyone's way. I no longer wanted to excel in all my subjects: this just gave the bullies another reason to laugh. I didn't want my name mentioned in class for doing well - I just wanted to be a nobody.

So I became a nobody.

Slowly, people left me alone. They stopped laughing at me for having no one - I think eventually they just stopped noticing me altogether. And that has never really left me, even once I had left school and got the job working at the Flute and Fiddle. Everyone knows me there, but they don't know me. I tried once or twice to fit in with a crowd, but that was my biggest regret. I was never one of them, I never could be. I was always just strange, jumpy little Chloe, who looks terrified of everyone and everything. I could never shift that persona, not even when no one knew my history. It became me, and I became that person.

I reach the end of the row of graves and turn down the next one, impatience building as my eyes continue to rake the tombstones. They are here somewhere, and I am getting closer, I can feel it deep inside me. They may be gone, but they are closer than they ever have been since they died.

My eyes reach the open book. My heart comes to a stop. The bottom drops out of the world for a moment. 

Tina Grace Lewis. 19th October 1972 - 14th June 2013. William Thomas Lewis. 28th May 1971 - 14th June 2013. To live in the hearts of those we love is not to die.

The birds sing beautifully in the trees surrounding us. The breeze lifts the leaves, rustling gently in the calm of this peaceful place. The marble headstone is a cool pillow against my cheek, a smooth blanket beneath my fingers. My tears leak onto their immortalised epitaph and fall into the earth beneath. My own gentle sobs break the quiet. 

The grass beside me is disturbed as he gets to his knees. Strong arms wrap around me, protecting me from the threats of the outside word but not from the pain within. I let go of the headstone and turn to him, hearing my own cries as though I am watching from a distance, as though they belong to someone else. I beat his back with my fists, wanting to cause as much pain as I am feeling, but he holds me tighter, enveloping me in his warmth, crushing me in the safety of his embrace.

"I'm so sorry Chloe," he whispers.

But his words don't help, because no amount of sorry can bring back the dead.